Painting by Joshua Been
Foraging for Wood on the Mountain
The wild up here is not creatures,
wooded, tangled wild.
It is absence wild.
Barren, empty, stone wild.
Worn-away wild.
Only the smell of weeds and hot air.
But a place where differences are clear.
Between the mind’s severity
and its harshness.
Between honesty and the failure of belief.
A man said no person is educated
who knows only one language,
for he cannot distinguish
between his thought
and the English version.
Up here he is translated to a place
where it is possible to discriminate
between age and sorrow.
Jack Gilbert
Posted over on Poetry Foundation
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